... Download Pdf. Using Head Hunters as a starting point, one can take a journey through the history of the synthesizer as used in popular music. After taking a year off, V.S.O.P. During the summer of 1975, Herbie toured Japan, where he and The Head Hunters Band were captured live in concert for CBS/Sony (Flood). But instead of pushing Hancock to pursue the soul- and funk-infused direction of Fat Albert Rotunda and catering to a larger audience, Rubinson advocated the increasingly avant-garde route that Hancock’s sextet was beginning to travel. What Herbie was looking to find in Monster, a mix of funk and rock, he found with the LP Future Shock (1983), and the globally mold-shattering single “Rockit.”. The composition reflected the emerging breakbeat sound with the use of actual rhythm breaks (spaces left open in the performance for improvisation, usually in between choruses and verses), the turntable, heavy metal crunch guitars, a Fairlight Synthesizer sequence, the Linn Drum, and a techno-driven groove. As with the DJs in Kingston, the turntable became an essential instrument. With digital synthesis and MIDI, you could reduce the amount of keyboards and increase the amount of sounds (with the sound module coming soon after). "Vein Melter" is a slow-burner, predominantly featuring Hancock and Maupin, with Hancock mostly playing Fender Rhodes electric piano , but occasionally bringing in some heavily effected synth parts. Long overdue. Magic Windows (1981) and Lite Me Up (1982) found Herbie in the studio environment favored by L.A. singer/songwriters. The bass line on “Chameleon” is performed on a polyphonic Minimoog (giving the bass two voices to fatten up the sound) and the strings and otherworldly colors are performed on the ARP 2600 and the ARP String Ensemble. Not in the literal sense of the word but in the sense of an evolving, inclusive entity that flows with the waters and rhythms of life, embracing each moment for what it is: an opportunity to interact, communicate, and produce sounds and textures unique to the circumstances but meant for the human race as a whole. Then came even more conceptual changes with the release of Sunlight (1977) where Herbie began to fully realize the vocal possibilities enabled by the advance of synthesizer technology. As he approached funk and dance music with the same ideas that he applied to jazz and film music, one can hear exploration and experimentation with the goal of being able to imprint your DNA onto everything you touched. group). live albums from the seventies. The new sextet that recorded both of Herbie’s next two Warner Brothers LPs, Mwandishi (Herbie’s Swahili name, meaning ‘Composer’) and Crossings, was formed in 1970, with Eddie Henderson, Julian Priester, Bennie Maupin, and Billy Hart (contextually replacing Coles, Brown, Henderson, and Heath) and Buster Williams (retained from the first sextet). From 1977 until 1981, the sound of most of the Hancock recordings was dominated by synthesizers. Herbie and The Mwandishi Band were booked to headline a week of 16 shows in Los Angeles at the famed Troubadour club as part of their newly designed and expanded touring regime: rock clubs and college campuses. Product Type: Musicnotes. All four songwriters played on the original version on Head Hunters, which features solos by Hancock and Maupin. Actual Proof (Herbie Hancock) 8:18 B1. The song has a characteristic jazz bass line and is set to a funk beat. Herbie Hancock is a Chameleon. Very special thanks to Richard Seidel, Seth Rothstein, Hal Miller, Max Schlueter, and Melinda Murphy. Lite Me Up was the first time that Herbie was basically the sole producer of his own album (except for two tracks which were produced by Narada Michael Walden and Jay Graydon). In January 1972, Rubinson formed his own production and management company, David Rubinson & Friends Inc./Adamsdad Management.